With a database containing more than 60,000 microorganisms compiled by researchers worldwide, the new search tool rapidly associates microbes with the metabolites they generate.
In a collaborative effort involving researchers from the University of California San Diego and scientists globally, a new search tool has been created to enhance the comprehension of microbial metabolism. Microorganisms play crucial roles in various biological and environmental systems, but existing techniques for studying microbial metabolism face limitations that hinder the understanding of their interactions and activities.
Published on February 5, 2023, in Nature Microbiology, this research directly tackles these constraints, offering the potential to revolutionize our insights into both human health and the environment.
Pieter Dorrestein, PhD, professor of pharmacology and pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and professor at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego, who serves as the senior study author, stated, “Humans are walking ecosystems in which microbes vastly outnumber us, but we know so little about the metabolites that microbes produce. This technology allows us to match microbes to the metabolic signatures they produce without any prior knowledge, representing a major leap forward in our ability to study microorganisms and their intricate relationships with humans and ecosystems.”
The innovative tool, dubbed microbeMASST by the scientists, was developed at UC San Diego’s Collaborative Microbial Metabolite Center, an NIH-supported initiative dedicated to establishing a globally-curated repository of microbial metabolomics data. This resource aims to assist researchers in studying the intricate interactions between microbes and humans.
